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Dry cleaning case presents frivolous lawsuit
PRI in the News
By: Dan Sheehan
6.27.2007
Collegiate Times.com, June 27, 2007
Our nation’s capitol, a place that’s no stranger to the ridiculous, awaits a ruling from D.C. Judge Judy Bartnoff on whether a lost pair of pants and the ensuing distress is worth $54 million. The plaintiff is a peer of Judge Bartnoff’s, D.C. administrative law judge Roy Pearson and he is suing Custom Cleaners’ owners Soo and Jin Chung for $54 million (originally $67 million), citing their failure to uphold a “Satisfaction Guarantee” and accusing them of fraud.
According to The Washington Post, Pearson is asking for $2 million for “discomfort, inconvenience and mental distress,” $500,000 for attorney fees and $15,000 to rent a car each weekend so he can drive to another dry cleaning establishment. The remaining $51.5M would be used to help other area consumers sue for similar problems.
Let’s break this one down. First, having lived in the D.C. area before, I can tell you that there is no need to rent a car to drive to another dry cleaners. In D.C. and the surrounding area, you can pretty much throw a rock blindfolded, and there is a good chance it will hit a drycleaner. $15,000 to rent a car? He could probably charter Marine One for less than that.
How can you ask for $500,000 in attorney fees when you represent yourself? For a Judge who probably doesn’t even make $100,000, and admitted to having less than $2,000 in his bank account, that would be quite the salary. If I was going to give my attorney $500,000, I’d at least want a ruling in my favor. It looks to me like Mr. Pearson, Esquire is overpaid, even in theory.
Finally, to ask for $2.5 million for “discomfort, inconvenience and mental distress” is to assume that it’s something so rare and extraordinary that it merits such a lofty sum. If I got $2.5 million every time I was inconvenienced, even just by the dry cleaners, I’d be playing golf with Warren Buffett instead of sitting here, writing this column.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve asked for light starch and received shirts that feel like cardboard. Sometimes I’ve even got a shirt lost or ruined, but none of them were diamond-studded or worn by Louis XIV, so I’m not sure how any logical, reasonable person could ask for $2.5 million for a pair of pants. The Chungs offered him up to $3,000, and he still had the audacity to decline. Pearson could have bought two Armani suits with that, and now is stuck with their court costs, and likely their attorney fees as well.
The U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform estimates that frivolous lawsuits have cost Americans $260.8 billion in 2005; that’s roughly $880 per person, and $3,250 for a family of four. Other think-tanks, such as the Pacific Research Institute, have estimated that the cost is as high as $9,827 per family of four. Either way, its money that could be better spent elsewhere.
The fact that this case has even reached a judge shows a need for some sort of “grand jury” to review cases such as these, so people like Pearson, who would abuse our system by filing these frivolous lawsuits, never get their day in court. Pearson, a man in personal and financial disarray, thought he could make easy money off hard-working, small-business owners, all while wasting the court’s time and making a mockery of our legal system. Surely, our men and women on the bench have better things to do than actually hear someone out who is asking for $54 million for a lost pair of pants.
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